Author & Novelist
As of today, I have told you everything I can tell you about “Days of the Phoenix” without damaging your ability to enjoy the story unfold. It has been a process and I am very glad to have been on the journey. When such a project is complete and you have done your duty, it’s good to take a moment to reflect about what has been done and what you are looking forward to.
I’m going to do just that in this week’s blog.
In “Days of the Phoenix,” our main character is declaring that he will free himself of the shackles of mental illness and he will find an authentic and true version of himself in the throes of the social experiment known as “the Assembly.” How the main character gets into the Assembly is for you to find out after you order your book on May 7th, the question at hand is, how would you, as an individual, get into the Assembly?
The good news is, I’m something of an authority on the matter, so I’ll give you some inside clue as to how you could find yourself in the middle of the project designed to free the most authentic version of yourself:
How boring of a name for something with so much grandeur! That was an intentional design – the Assembly is a social experiment where people can shed their every day selves and let the brilliant flames inside be seen on the outside. Boring exterior with an interesting subtext. The name and the function are perfect for each other.
While I was conceptualizing “Days of the Phoenix,” the most broad version of the concept was “social experiment,” and “being who you are without aesthetics getting in the way.” It didn’t have to be an assembly, it could have been anything: a bunch of introverts getting together to play smash mouth basketball, drag rang in a big store parking lot, an MMORPG, or an actual experiment where people’s brain chemicals were being altered. A few simple criteria had to be met: it had to be where people, who wouldn’t associate with each other otherwise, were grouped together; the second criteria had to be a platform where people could reveal their truest selves.
For the entire month of April, we are going to be leading up to the release of “Days of the Phoenix” (available May 7th, EXCLUSIVELY on Amazon.Com) with information about the book and why you should be as excited as I am to read it!
By now I’m sure you’ve heard the premise of the novel: a man spends a summer with a man that he’s only ever met on the internet to participate in a social experiment, hoping to find the most authentic sense of himself possible. The internal struggle and the conflict of the main character is all the fun in reading the book, so I’m not going to spoil that for you. I do, however, want to share one of the most important premise aspects with you: the internet friend.
A.P. Miller 